Recent Articles in the Field of Public Opinion Research

Abstract

In this section, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research reviews articles that have recently been published in peer-refereed journals and which broadly relate to the field of public opinion. The intention is not to give an exhaustive overview of a given study but rather to alert our readers to interesting ideas and research in our field. Beaudoin attempts to fill a gap in the research into the formation of social capital in the U.S. He sets out a theoretical framework to examine the interaction between ethnic group and the effect of TV and newspaper news exposure on social capital development, and discusses four possible causes that might explain ethnicity acting as a modifying factor: news portrayals of ethnic groups; differences in language skills; differences in residential mobility; and communication culture, drawing a distinction between the oral and literate traditions. He then tests the framework empirically, using the 2005 Health Information National Trends Survey, a nationally representative telephone and online survey of American adults. Social capital is measured in three respects (auxiliary relationships, organization membership, and attendance of religious services); news use is measured separately for exposure to newspaper, national TV, and local TV news; and four ethnic groups are distinguished. The study finds that newspaper use is a significant predictor of social capital, but watching national TV news and local TV news are not. However, there are also interactions with ethnicity: newspaper exposure has a more positive effect for Whites than for Latinos, and TV national news exposure is a positive predictor of social capital for Black Americans, significantly more so than for Whites. Beaudoin concludes that his findings are consistent with the communication culture explanation for differences by ethnicity, but not with the other three possible causes that he had hypothesized.